A/N: My usual rant about voting, commenting, and reading.... Sorry I haven't proofread just yet.
(Nikkei POV)
Run. Run. Don't stop. Don't look back. Go. Faster. My legs burned as I ran in the back of our pack. Joseph and Zoe in front leading us farther away from home. My lungs felt as if they had been engulfed in flames at the moment. Ever pounding footstep sent lightning like pains throughout my whole body as I ran after the others. Sometimes I wish that I had more time to workout more and this was defiantly one of those moments. It felt as if we had been running through this forest for hours, but we still never stopped.
I saw an older women stop right next to me falling behind. She was to old for this amount of exercise. I would have stopped to help her, but I needed to keep up with the group. What felt like forever later me stopped running. I fell to the ground trying to get a reasonable amount of oxygen in my lungs. My legs felt like jello as they violently shook. I saw several others fall down like me. Zoe leaned against a tree with Joseph at her side. I finally could take a deep breath.
"Zoe." I tried to call my friends name, but my throat was to dry. I called again for her, this time she looked over at me.
"Nikkei! I thought you stayed with my mother! Are you okay?" She sounded normal and seemed to have quickly recovered from our run. Her eyes darted across my own. She had wished I had stayed with her mother. I could see is in her eyes. It broke my heart that she wasn't glad to see my presents. I stretched my legs and slowly sat up.
"Your mother will heal if the others help her." I said to her as I dusted myself off.
Zoe looked relieved. "Okay thank you." She turned and was about to walk away when I said, "
Where are we going?" She stopped moving and stood quietly. "I don't know. We are just going as far away as possible. Nikkei... I am sorry."
"For what?" I hopped she was apologizing for something in the past and not the future, but in these hard times I knew it could go either way.
"For being so selfish." She said quietly not wanting anyone else to hear her apology. I frowned, but still responded politely. "It's okay. We still have several more hours until the sun goes down so if we want to get away we can start moving. I will make a sun dial to tell the time while you and Joseph make decisions."
She nodded and walked away leaving me sitting on the hard ground. I sighed and looked down at the green grass next to me. Zoe was just trying to help her mother and not really trying to hurt me when she didn't notice me, but at the same time I felt like she only cared for her mother and herself. I didn't mean to be angry at my friend.
'Need some help?" A voice asked me. I looked up at the boy who stood before me. He reached his hand out to help me up. I took it and swiftly got to my feet.
"Thanks. I'm Nikkei." I made sure there was nothing on my black skinny jeans.
"Nice name Nikkei. I'm Nick." He laughed a little at how similar our names were. "I know, well knew, almost everybody on our street, but I don't think I saw you." He said looking into my eyes. His skin was perfectly tan and I could see the muscles through his tight shirt. Wait...hold on!? Am I drooling over a guy I just met?! Nope. No.
"Uh...I was usually in the common house working in the hospital with my mom." I sighed. My mother refused to leave the house without my brother, Sam. Sam was sick, to sick to move. She had told me to go to the common house when the invasion began. She had yelled at me till I couldn't argue anymore. She made me leave her and Sam. I would have stayed with them when the others decided to leave if I had not already seen my old home. I was just a pile of bricks. No one could have survived that. Especially not my already weak brother.
